sublime #13

smoke and fluff and burnished edges (and a discount code)

there have been some very excellent morning views lately as clouds of mist envelope the distant city scape; a band of hills float on the horizon and remind me of road trips in far away places. We’re in the canopy and today our windows are full of murky yellow-green leaves that tell me orange and red are coming soon.

over the weekend (a rare wedding-free occasion) we took a walk to a place we don’t usually see in the middle months and because of that it felt new to us in places. I took a few phone photos because the light sprinkled mystically through the trees but not as many as I’d have liked as we were walking with others. The paths were lined with everything that is late summer: smoke and fluff and burnished edges.

recent moments in pictures; lichen and the light through bindweed trumpets, vegetation tangle, fallen reeds, very into scrunchies and broderie anglaise and collars and cuffs and anything else that gives me the feeling of being inside an old oil painting, debris when shooting with Anna, trying to walk on pebbled beaches, other people’s laundry and weathered lettering.

more recent moments as documented in my Notes app;

• swans instantly make a scene idyllic, especially when viewed through a mucky train window

• cheese fries

• Max Richter’s version of Vivaldi’s Summer (thanks to Fi for reminding me of this - Fi walked herself across the Oudolf field with this blasting out and it was the most extra thing I’ve ever witnessed)

• harvesting in all the fields = Richard Scarry books in real life. also van gogh and monet paintings that might be cliché but cliché is that for a reason

• the perfect speckling of a rotting apple. golden skin wrinkles, a tiny universe forming

• the smell of lingering smoke and the light weaving through it

• gentle rain on the pond at Settle (actually there is a picture for this one)

• Canarian salted potatoes

• declaring wild carrot umbels are my favourite of all the umbels

• (to add balance to the cheese fries) treated to the fanciest meal while wedding-ing at Rochelle Canteen and it. was. everything.

• a badger and a fox walked past the garage

…and with September so begins the season of magical light. I would argue that there’s always magic in the light if you can see it but at this time of year the sun is low and full of dust so it really is a little bit more magical. Described so perfectly in the Seattle Times.

uncharacteristically wordy bit:

recent jobs have left my ankles nettled - which is generally a good thing to me as it means I’m wading in green spaces. Recently i’ve documented growing (and some pretty vigorous cutting back which also counts as growing), as well as furniture-making, architects doing architect things, flower arranging, a collector, open-fire cooking and of course, people saying YES to each other and celebrating that with all their favourite people.

in a bid to fill my life with more work that makes me feel good I have been looking at past projects (18 years!) that tick those boxes. It’s no secret that I often send Alice pictures of

compost

my veg scraps and other random bin things and I’ve decided that I should probably lean a little more into the things that make my work mine. My days are spent shooting in pretty special places that are largely instagram-perfect (not a huge fan of that term but it’s what I mean) and my way of balancing that is finding something interesting in the corners. If I’m just reiterating a view I’ve already seen over and over, I don’t find that it challenges me but if I can add some of my weirdness and show someone something in a light they hadn’t seen previously (I mean figuratively as well as literally) then I’m a happy bunny.

A photographer friend once told me to shoot the stories I wanted to shoot and to find a place for them afterwards instead of waiting for some magical commission to appear out of the blue. Some things require a little nudge from others so know that I’m looking towards shooting the ‘nature stuff’ (massive over-simplification) such as gardens and gardeners, growers, artists and all things that come from the earth (again massive over-simplification). I am particularly fond of the full circle - not just flowers in bloom but the seed heads, decay and the mushy brown bits that still have so much beauty to offer. That idea spans into still life compositions so again, I’m putting that thought out into the world… and if you are a picture editor or would like to commission me to visit a place to document it through my eyes then please get in touch.

end of uncharacteristically wordy bit

lastly, in celebration of September being birthday month I have a special treat code for sublime subscribers… The code is SUNSHINE and works on everything.